by Cassie Miles
“I never guessed that Penny was dating an adult man. She was only seventeen when she waltzed through the door with that bracelet.” She shot a hard glance at Cole.
“If she was sleeping with him, that’s rape, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “This older man is the mastermind behind the gang and the robberies. They call him Baron.”
Still holding Goldie, she surged to her feet. “And he’s the father.”
“Yes.”
“I want you to catch this bastard.”
Cole had come to the same conclusion. He and Rachel couldn’t run forever. The only way they’d be able to turn themselves in to the cops would be if they had solid, irrefutable evidence against Baron. They needed to go on the offensive.
“We can start by talking to Jenna,” he said. “She might know Baron’s real name.”
“I’ll make the call,” Pearl said as she handed the sleeping baby to Rachel.
In the kitchen, Cole went over a few things Pearl needed to avoid mentioning. Obviously, she couldn’t tell Jenna about him or Rachel. And it was best not to mention that she had Goldie with her. Penny’s high school teacher had already kept one secret from Pearl. “She’s not entirely trustworthy.”
“You can say that again.” Pearl gave a brisk nod. “Listen, Cole. I’m a pretty good actress. Just tell me what to say.”
“You want to get the father’s name. That’s number one.”
“Got it.”
“Pretend that you never saw us. Say that you had a call from Penny and she had her baby.” He glanced at the clock on the stove. “It’s after nine. Will Jenna be at work?”
“Not today. The kids are out of school because of the blizzard.”
He handed Pearl his cell phone, which had been recharging for the past hour. “Make the call. Put it on speaker.”
Jenna answered on the third ring. Her greeting was overly effusive—as giggly as the teenagers she taught. “I haven’t seen you in ages, Pearl. How are you?”
“I’m worried,” she said. “Penny called last night and said she had her baby, but I haven’t been able to get in touch with her. Did she call you?”
“Boy or girl?”
“Girl. Her name is Goldie,” Pearl said.
“Congratulations, grandma. You must be so happy.”
“Must be.” Sadness tugged at the corners of Pearl’s lips, but she kept her voice upbeat. “I sure wish I knew the baby’s daddy. I think it was somebody she dated in high school. Did she mention him to you?”
“Penny has so many boyfriends. I can’t keep track.”
“This one was special. He gave her that sparkly tennis bracelet.”
“Sorry. I don’t remember.”
Cole didn’t believe Jenna. Penny would have been sure to brag about her diamonds, and she’d told Rachel that Jenna was her confidante.
Pearl said, “She called him Mister Big.”
“Like Sex and the City.” She giggled. “I guess Penny is the Granby version of high fashion.”
“Are you sure,” Pearl said, “that you don’t remember him?”
“Not at all, but I’ll let you know when Penny contacts me. I’m sure she’ll turn up. Like a bad penny.”
“Why?” Pearl’s voice betrayed her rising frustration. “Why are you so sure she’ll contact you?”
“For one thing, we’re friends. For another, she’s been sending me these mysterious packages to hold for her.”
Jenna was the contact.
Penny had been using her high school teacher as the drop-off person after the robberies. She’d been sending Jenna bundles of loot.
Chapter Twelve
As hideouts went, the office in the back of Lily Belle’s Soda Fountain and Ice Cream Shop was okay. At least, Rachel thought so. She would have preferred staying in the house, but too many people knew Pearl was living there. Lily Belle’s was empty, closed for the season, and it had an alarm system.
She and Cole would stay here until nightfall. According to his FBI training, the first twenty-four hours were considered to be the most crucial in a manhunt. After that, the intensity would let up, and they’d make their move.
Rachel slipped off her parka and lowered herself onto the mint-green futon. After sending Pearl on her way with Goldie and the massive backpack filled with baby supplies, she felt unencumbered and a hundred times less tense. All she had to worry about was her own safety and Cole’s.
After closing the office door and placing their food supplies on the coffee table in front of the futon, he prowled around the windowless, peach-colored room. The top of the cream-painted desk was empty except for a day-by-day calendar, a pencil jar that looked like an ice cream cone and a couple of framed photographs of smiling, blue-eyed kids. Lily’s grandchildren, no doubt. A row of three-drawer cabinets in pastel colors lined the back wall. Bouquets of fake flowers in matching pastel vases sat atop them. A light coat of dust covered every surface. Otherwise, the office was clean. The lingering scent of vanilla and buttery cream hung in the air.
“Too cutesy,” he muttered.
“Like Willie Wonka. But with ice cream.”
He checked the thermostat. “Good thing we brought blankets. It’s set at fifty-two degrees.”
“Sounds about right. Warm enough to keep things from freezing but not wasteful. Nobody is supposed to be here until the summer season.”
He sank onto the futon beside her. “Take off your shoes.”
“Why?”
“We should explore this place, and I don’t want to leave wet footprints in case somebody looks through the front window.”
With a groan, she wiggled her butt deeper into the futon cushion and stretched her legs out in front of her. Her thigh muscles ached after their crack-of-dawn trek across Shadow Mountain Lake in snowshoes. “What’s the point of looking around? Nobody knows we’re here. We’re safe.”
“Are we?”
“Please let me pretend—just for a moment—that crazy people with guns aren’t trying to kill us.”
“That’s not your style,” he said. “You’re realistic. Practical. You don’t delude yourself.”
His snap analysis was pretty much on target, but she didn’t want him to get cocky. “What makes you think you know me?”
“I’m a trained observer.”
She supposed that was true. “In your undercover work, I guess you need to be able to figure out how people are going to act. To be thinking one step ahead.”
“That’s right.”
“But that’s on the surface. On a deeper level, you don’t know me at all.”
He dropped his boots onto the pink-and-green patterned area rug. “I’ve had a chance to observe your behavior in high-stress situations. I know how you’ll react.”
“But you don’t know why,” she said. “You can’t tell what I’m thinking. You don’t know what’s going on inside my head.”
He turned toward her and stared—stared hard as though he could actually see her brain working. The two days’ growth of stubble on his chin and his messy hair made him look rough, rugged and sexy. Her gaze shifted from his eyes to his lips.
The corner of his mouth twitched into a grin. Then he came across the futon and leaned in close. The suddenness of his kiss took her breath away.
Without thinking, she wrapped her arms around his torso and pulled him against her. His mouth worked against hers. His tongue pushed through her lips.
In spite of her exhaustion, her body responded with a surge of excitement. She didn’t feel the chill in the room, didn’t look for an escape, didn’t want to do anything but prolong this contact.
Ever since their kiss in the cabin, she’d been waiting for this moment—a time when they were finally alone. She had every intention of making love to Cole, but she didn’t want to give in too fast. She wanted him to work for it.
Abruptly, she ended the kiss and pulled away from him. But only a few inches away. His face filled her field of vision, and she was captivated by the shi
mmer in his light brown eyes.
He murmured, “Is that what you were thinking?”
Was she that obvious? Did she radiate a vibe that told him she was a single, thirty-something woman who needed a big, strong man? “You tell me.”
“You kissed me back,” he said.
“Just being polite.”
“Here’s what I know about you,” he said. “You’re smart, competent and pretty. You’re at a good place in your life, and you love your work.”
“I sound good,” she said. “You’re lucky to be in the same room with me.”
“You’re brave. But you’re also scared.”
Apparently, the compliment train had come to an end. The gleam in his eyes sharpened as he assessed her. He said, “You’ve been hurt.”
“Who hasn’t?”
As smoothly as he’d pounced on her, he adjusted his position so he was sitting beside her. “Who hurt you, Rachel? What happened?”
She thought of the men who had passed through her life, ranging from motorcycle man to a rocker with more tattoos than brains. That array of losers wasn’t her greatest hurt.
“A six-year-old boy,” she said.
She had never talked about this. Never. The memory was too painful, too devastating. Her memory of that boy sucked the air from her lungs.
“His name,” she said, “was Adam.”
He held her hand. “Go on.”
“I’d rather not.”
After this crisis was over, she didn’t honestly expect to see him again. He would go back to California and be an undercover fed. She’d stay here and continue with her midwife career. They were like the proverbial ships passing in the night—if ships were capable of stopping at sea and having hot sex. Bottom line: she didn’t need to reveal the dark corners of her soul to him.
He squeezed her hand. “Do you want to talk about what happened with Adam?”
“You’re not going to give up on this, are you?”
“No pressure.” He sat back on the futon and turned his gaze away from her. His profile was relaxed and calm. He was waiting; his message was clear.
If she wanted to talk, he’d listen. If not, she could keep her secrets buried. It certainly would be less complicated to grab him and proceed with the passion they were both feeling, but the words were building up inside her. If she didn’t speak, she might explode.
“I’d been working as an EMT for a year and a half,” she said. “I’d seen a lot. Traffic accidents. Heart attacks. Gunshot wounds. The work was getting to me. I was on the verge of a burnout.”
She remembered the sunny summer day in Denver—the kind of day when you should be taking a puppy on a walk through a grassy green park. “We got the call and responded. It was a fire and an explosion in an apartment complex.”
“Meth lab?”
“I don’t know how it happened. Somebody probably told me, but the facts went out of my head.”
The details blurred in her memory, but she felt a stab in her gut as she recalled the scene in a central courtyard with three-story buildings on all four sides. The smell of grit and smoke and blood came back to her.
“When we got there, rescuers were pulling people out of the buildings. Other ambulances had already arrived, and a senior EMT had taken charge. He assigned me to triage the wounded while my partner loaded the ambulance and took the more serious burn victims to the nearest hospital.”
In minutes, her uniform had been covered in greasy soot and blood as she tended to the survivors. First-, second-and third-degree burns. Wounds caused by the shrapnel from the explosion. Someone had fallen down a flight of stairs.
“That’s when I met Adam. A sweet-faced kid. He was lying on a sheet on the ground, and he didn’t seem to be badly injured. His head was bleeding. The laceration didn’t appear to be deep. When I started working on him, he looked up at me and smiled. He told me his name, and he promised he’d be all right. His exact words were…I’m not going to die.”
A swell of emotion rose up inside her. She told herself that not everyone could be saved, but that truth did little to assuage the pain of her sorrow. She’d been hurt. God, yes, she’d been hurt. Not by a person but by life.
When Cole wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close, she didn’t object. Her cheek rested against his chest; his solid presence comforted her.
In a whisper, she continued, “I left Adam. Went to deal with other victims. A woman with a broken leg called out Adam’s name. His mother. Somehow, they’d gotten separated. She was frantic.”
Rachel hadn’t wasted time trying to calm Adam’s mother. She’d gone back to the boy. His injuries had seemed less traumatic. She’d thought she could carry him and reunite the boy with his mother. “He was dead.”
She’d tried to resuscitate the child. CPR. Straight oxygen. Mouth-to-mouth. Nothing worked. “I couldn’t bring him back.”
“Is that when you changed jobs?”
“Shortly after that.” She shrugged. It wasn’t necessary to talk about the months of debilitating depression and anger. The important thing was that she’d fought her way through to the other side. She’d learned how to cope. “You asked me what I’m afraid of, and this is it. I’m scared of losing someone I care about.”
“Given that fear,” he said, “you don’t fall in love easily.”
“No, I don’t.” She lifted her chin. “You?”
“Not so much.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “Let’s get moving. I want to check this place out. Your shoes.”
She appreciated the lightning-quick change of subject. After baring her soul to him, the last thing she wanted was to wallow in grief. She’d said her piece. Time to move on.
When she caught his gaze, she wondered if Cole had known this would be her reaction. God, she hated being predictable. “What about my shoes?”
“Take them off.”
She raised a questioning eyebrow. “Only the shoes?”
“Later, I’ll take your socks, your hat and your belt. I’ll unbutton your shirt. Unsnap your jeans.” He rose from the futon. “For now, just the shoes. We’ll take a look around.”
In her stocking feet, she padded behind him on the concrete floor of the kitchen area in the back of the ice cream parlor. Like the office, there weren’t any windows. When Cole turned on the overhead light, she saw an array of shelves, drawers, stainless steel counters and a commercial-sized sink, as well as machines of varying size and shape.
“Lily must make her own ice cream,” she said. “What’s your favorite flavor?”
“Rocky Road,” he said.
“That figures.”
He opened the door to a pantry. The shelves were all cleaned out. Likewise for the freezer unit. A closet by the back door was filled with cleaning supplies.
She asked, “Is there something special we’re looking for?”
“I’m visualizing. If somebody breaks in here, I want to know where I’m going.”
“There’s a burglar alarm,” she reminded him. “We’ll have time to escape.”
“Not if the alarm is short-circuited.”
She folded her arms and leaned against a counter.
“It must be a drag to always focus on the worst-case scenario.”
“Yeah, yeah, poor me. Living the hard life of an undercover agent. When you walk into a room, you always look for the exits. You check out everybody you meet, looking for concealed weapons.”
“You sound bored with it.”
“I’m ticked off. Usually, I’m on my own. Making my own decisions and deciding my own actions. I get a lot of grief for being a lone wolf. And now, when I call on my handler for help, Waxman turns his back on me.”
The front area of Lily Belle’s was a typical ice cream parlor and soda fountain with sunlight pouring through the front windows onto the white tile floor. The color scheme was—surprise, surprise—pastel. And the far wall was decorated with a fanciful painting of an animal parade. Pink lion with a top hat and baton. A lavender bear in a tutu. G
reen and blue squirrels blowing bubbles from their trumpets.
Wrought-iron white chairs and tables were stacked against the walls. Padded stools lined up at a typical soda fountain counter, and there was a long row of empty coolers where the ice cream would be stored in the summer.
“FYI,” he said, “if we get attacked, come this way. There’s room to hide behind the counter and the coolers. If worse comes to worst, you can bust through the windows. In the back, there’s only one exit.”
“Lovely.” She smiled at him. “You know what makes me really sad?”
“What’s that?”
“Looking at all this, I’m dying for some ice cream. Maybe a fudge sundae with whipped cream on top.”
“Sounds like you need a little sweetness.”
He slung his arm around her waist and yanked her toward him with such force that her feet came off the floor. He pressed her tightly against him and kissed her hard. There was nothing tentative about his approach; the idea of making love was a foregone conclusion. He was aggressive, fierce, demanding.
And she liked it.
Chapter Thirteen
The creamy pastel ambience in the office contrasted the hot red fire of their passion. Rachel felt like she ought to turn the desktop photographs of Lily Belle’s grandchildren facedown so they wouldn’t be traumatized. Her spirits rose and her excitement soared as Cole tore off her panties.
Breathing hard, she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him. Her right leg coiled around his, and she pressed herself against his erection.
His hand grabbed her butt and held her in place. He arched his neck and tilted his head back. For a moment, she thought he might start howling like a wolf. Then he lowered his head and consumed her with a kiss. His hands explored her body with rough caresses.
She felt herself turning into a quivering mass of jelly, unable to stand. They slid to the floor. On the pink-and-green patterned carpet, he straddled her and sat back, looking down.
His body amazed her. Muscular arms. Lean torso. Smooth chest. When she reached toward him, he cuffed her wrists in his grasp.
“No fair.” She gasped. “I want to touch.”